Elizabeth Warren Pledges ‘Executive Action in Every Corner’ for Gun Control

On Thursday Democrat presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren tweeted a video clip in which she pledged “executive action in every corner” for gun control.

Warren said, “40,000 Americans died last year from gun violence.” Warren’s claim is actually a loose reference to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers for 2017–the most recent numbers–which show 39,773 people died in a firearm-related death.

However, Warren did not mention that nearly two-thirds of those deaths were due to suicide, not “gun violence.”

In fact, the surge in the gun deaths was the result of a surge in suicides. And the Chicago Tribune’s Steven Chapman notes that “the increase was actually greater for the non-firearm suicide rate than for the firearm suicide rate.”

But Warren presented it all as due to “gun violence,” before pledging to more gun control, which included a promise to reduce the number of “gun violence” deaths by 80 percent.

She said, “We will make change, we’ll figure out what works, and then we’ll make some more change and some more change.”

Warren added, “I will take executive action in every corner, with the Department of Justice, with ATF, to move as much as I can.”

She then noted that Congress will have a role too, but she suggested they are frozen in place because “the gun industry controls Washington.” She described such influence as “corruption” and said “real change, meaningful change, starts with breaking up the corruption in Washington, breaking the stranglehold of the gun industry and the NRA.”